


In the Dark

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Sandman (Comics)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-19
Updated: 2006-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:17:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edwin and Charles can talk about anything when it's dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> There are a lot of little nods here, to canon, to Beetlejuice (Recently Dead Handbook), and detective fiction (Including Spenser for Hire). I hope I haven't made it too obtuse.
> 
> Written for hua

 

 

Fandom: Dead Boy Detectives  
Characters: Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine

After they left the school, Edwin and Charles went a bit wild. They were proper truants now, truant from school, and truant even from life and death. They went to the movies, libraries, anywhere they could walk into easily. Even after the first big case, they spent more time goofing off than they did working on cases. But that was during the day.

Night was different. Ghosts don't need sleep, and the dead are usually beyond the reach of dream, Charles and Edwin hadn't yet laid aside the habit of going to bed at night. They would lay down together in the comfortable dark, and even if they couldn't sleep, they could talk, and the dark made it somehow easier to talk about...stuff.

\---

"Who knew that ghosts had rules? Did you ever hear anything about that.. you know before?"

"Charles, everyone has rules, that is what separates us from the lower beasts, so headmaster used to say."

"Oh there's a fine authority! I assumed once we were dead, we wouldn't have to follow rules anymore. If there is one thing I am done with it is, rules, and school, and this stupid "Rules for the recently deceased" handbook. If we were going to follow rules we'd be long gone. We're rebels. Wait here comes the old lady, we'd better hide."

"She's gone now, I think she went off to have tea with the other `ghost ladies' ".

"Edwin, is it wrong to be creeped out by other ghosts?"

"Old ladies like that are a force unto themselves, my friend, and I think they are the natural enemy of men like us, whether any of us are alive or dead."

"Edwin, that's great, you should put that down in your journal, in case we want to write our own detective novel. It could be well and truly...... ghost written."

"That was awful. You know, bad puns are the verbal equivalent of a fart."

"Your grandmother tell you that?"

"Well, then, let's go be publicly odious, and tell jokes just outside the open window over there."

\---

"Edwin, do you think we are ever going to, you know, grow up?"

"What do you mean?"

"It's been years, now. If I were still alive, I guess I'd be in college, but I don't feel any different. You've been around even longer, though I suppose Hell is different about that. Somehow we're still kids. Like being dead mean there's only so much more change we can manage."

"What, you want to get a ghost house, and a ghost wife and get married?"

"Edwin, I told you, I don't like girls."

"Charles, What do you mean you don't like girls?"

"Well- they're alright as people and all, I suppose, but I wouldn't want to have to spend my life with one. I'd rather spend it with you."

"Oh. Really?"

"Why do you think I stayed? Between you and the dame... I chose you."

"Oh."

\---

"Charles, that wasn't very nice, what we just did! Someday we're going to have to pay for that, and I KNOW what sorts of things they do to thieves... down there."

"What? I thought it was a great idea!! Pure unadulterated genius!"

"Well, I somehow don't think it's fair to offer to drive the ghosts away from a haunted newsstand when we're the ghosts... it seems dishonest somehow. "

"How else are we going to do it? We can offer a 100% guarantee that those spirits who were rifling through the comics case will never return. Who else could make that offer? Besides, I don't think he could have gotten much money for those old boxes of True Crime comics."

"Charles, you lied and told him they were haunted and he had to throw them out!"

"They were haunted, by us, and they still are, so it's not a lie."

"It wasn't very nice."

No, but it was very profitable! Ohh, look there are some paperbacks in here, too! It's going to take a few trips to get all of this haul back to the treehouse. And look Edwin, this one has a place where you can send away for a detective's licence! That's just what we need to help drum up business, a licence. And maybe a sign would help."

\---

"So let me get this straight. Cats can see us, dogs can see us, and little kids can see us. But adults can't unless they are very old."

"Edwin, I think we were pretty much invisible to adults when we were alive. If they'd paid more attention neither of us would have wound up like this. You know, I don't think I have ever been so grateful for indifferent adults in my lifetime."

"Charles, that's really kind of dark."

"We're dead, I think we're entitled to be a little goth from time to time."

"What's goth?"

\---

"Edwin?"

"Do you ever feel, cold, at night? Do you miss being able to touch other people?"

"You mean like parents, or like other things, climbing in bed with your mates in the winter."

"Maybe a bit of both."

"You can't miss something you didn't have. I didn't have anyone really. I heard the other boys at night, especially over holiday, bundling up together, or sometimes early in the morning."

"Would you like to come over here? We have each other now."

\---

"There we go, The Rowland and Paine Detective Agency, as official as any sign painted on a glass door, like we used to have. It's as official as it can look, on the side of a treehouse. Partners, like the great Holmes and Watson."

"Watson was a sidekick. Most of the stores are a guy and a sidekick, or a valet, or a secretary, or something. I am not a sidekick, besides, I'm older and more experienced than you, Charles. Will you stop treating me like your sidekick just because I don't leap headlong into the slightest danger? And drop it about the old office."

"More experienced? Who jumped out of his skin at the other day over just some leaves in the alley? I suppose you are right about the sidekicks, though. I guess we'll just have to take turns. We'll just have to be a new kind of detective, more like Spenser and Hawk..."

"I am NOT shaving my head."

"Well, whatever else happens, we have each other."

"Partners?"

"Partners."

 

 

 


End file.
